


The Subtle Grace of Gravity

by MoonAndPomegranate



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonAndPomegranate/pseuds/MoonAndPomegranate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unbonded omegas don’t have high-power jobs - they're barely allowed outside. They don’t last very long without anyone protecting them. Mike Ross has been hiding his omega status so he can choose the life he wants, suppressing his hormones at the cost of his mental faculties. Harvey Specter is going to change all that and Mike is going to change <em>everything</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Subtle Grace of Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> So I noticed there aren't too many, if any, Alpha/Omega fics in the Suits fandom, so I thought I'd take a crack at it. If you've never heard of this AU, go ahead and read this really useful primer: http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489  
> It's not for everyone - it implies impossible anatomy and some dubcon at the very least, but I try to treat that as sensitively as possible. This work is un-beta'ed as of now. If anyone is interested in helping me out with that, let me know!

It wasn’t Mike’s first interview and from the way things were going, he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. The red haired receptionist had been scathing in her condescension, and all she had said was, “Michael Ross? Go right in.”

His interviewer – Harvey Specter, the best closer in New York, in possession of a record so solid it could stop a bullet – was similarly terse. They had shaken hands and Mr. Specter had raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Is that it?” Mike had tried to smile and pretend he didn’t notice, like always. He couldn’t imagine what it would take to impress someone like Mr. Specter. He’d always known alphas like him and they had never given Mike a second glance. Then again, avoiding the attention of alphas was the whole point of long-term suppressing. Keeping himself hormonally blank was the smart thing to do in the long run. It just did him no good when he had to interview for associate positions at major law firms.

At least this would be over quickly. If there was something to be said for a bored, arrogant alpha, it was that they had no patience for bullshit. Thank god. Mike would rather get it over with and, really, it would have been a busy day without the interview. He was already two days late on his delivery of suppressants to the safe shelter. At least five of the omegas there were forcibly breaking their bonds. They’d need double doses for weeks. The stress of breaking a bond would kill them without medical intervention and it was so hard to get a doctor to prescribe even small, short term suppressant doses. Mike was their only hope and he was happy to provide for the more desperate omegas at the shelter. If this interview continued going this badly, he could take his bike on the train to Queens and get back to Brooklyn in time to have dinner with Grammy. 

It was a shame, because Pearson Hardman _would_ be his ideal place of employment. It was exciting. It was powerful. It was…for people who weren’t constantly poisoning their own mind. Sharp, quick-witted people. People who could score above a 170 on their LSATs.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Ross,” Specter said then, startling Mike out of his plans. In his hurry to do at least one thing right, Mike knocked the handle of his briefcase against the arm of the chair.

And the case fell open.

The moment seemed to stretch on for hours. The bags of little yellow, white, and red pills were unmistakable. Bags, plural. Mr. Specter sniffed the air. Mike shook his head.

“It’s undetectable. Completely undetectable,” he said, and Specter frowned. He obviously bought into the myth that suppressants make omegas smell “off”. They don’t – suppressed omegas smell innocuous, like betas. Or maybe Mr. Specter thought, like every Alpha did, that his sense of smell was better, obviously, than any other Alpha’s, that _he_ would be able to smell any and all omegas, no matter that chemistry could make that scientifically impossible.

“An omega?” Specter’s gaze was dark. Mike certainly had his full attention now.

“Obviously.” Mike resisted rolling his eyes. He knew where this conversation would go. The long lecture about how wrong it was to take suppressants, how it hurt society as a whole, then the threats, then the demand for sexual favors.

Mr. Specter picked up a file folder from the desk in front of them, opened it and scrutinized the first page.

“It doesn’t say anything about that in here,” he said. Mike just stared at him – didn’t he get what was happening? Then penny seemed to drop and Specter’s eyes widened a fraction. “How long have you been hiding this, Mr. Ross?”

Mike gave a humorless laugh. For all his swagger, this guy wasn’t that quick. “Nine years.”

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Specter said, shaking his head. 

Mike began picking up the bags and papers that had spilled out onto the floor, if only to avoid Specter’s scrutiny as he said, “I wouldn’t expect _you_ to. You’ve probably never even met someone who needed these.”

“No, I don’t understand,” he flipped through the papers in the folder “Your academic record is as good as anyone’s out there,” he indicated toward the reception area full of Mike’s classmates, “Better than some. Suppressants – they ruin focus, affect memory and language. How did you get this far on them?”

Oh. Point to Mr. Specter, then. Mike sighed and sat down, holding the re-packed case tightly on his lap. Mr. Specter remained standing. “I was…I was a genius. Photographic memory, perfect recall…until I was 15, I never had to try in school – at all. And I got perfect grades. But my first heat…after that it was impossible to stay in school. There were some alphas that…I don’t know, they fixated on me or something. You know how it is. I was supposed to have been separated out by then, but we couldn’t afford it. They were going to pull me out, homeschool me and take responsibility for my bonding. Not that I had to worry about it for very long. My parents died and I moved east to my grandmother’s.”

Mike paused then. Mr. Specter’s head was cocked. He looked like he was calculating some kind of sum, performing complex mathematics behind his eyes. Mike thought about before everything went wrong – when his parents were alive and his mind worked with numbers like a well-oiled machine. There was a time, before his first heat, when he didn’t need to spend all his time reading people, constantly assessing the success of his deception. He would read books, instead, and every word would be inked in his head, seemingly forever. He remembered those hellish months when the words erased themselves, and the numbers wouldn’t fit together anymore and his parents were just gone… 

“So your grandmother put you on suppressants? At _fifteen_?” Specter asked, properly scandalized.

Mike couldn’t help but smirk. People were so offended at the idea of a teenager who didn’t want to have sex. He spoke again, “She couldn’t afford a facility either, but she could afford the suppressants. It was my idea – she could have tried to get me bonded to someone decent, but I wanted to go back to school as soon as possible. I didn’t want an alpha in my life. My parents never put my orientation on record. So new school, new city and as far as anyone ever knew, I was a beta. A beta of average intelligence and ordinary memory. And I had to try in school and it was harder than I ever could have imagined and I still did fine – better than fine.” Mike indicated to the file in Mr. Specter’s hand.

He was frowning at Mike, scrutinizing. He sat on the edge of the desk. “You must have been incredible before. Why would you give that up?”

“I didn’t give up _anything_!” Rage was rising in Mike faster than he could control. How dare he stare down at him like that? How _dare_ have anything to say to Mike about this? “I taught myself how learn all over again. I got good at it all over again. Good enough to get through Columbia and Harvard Law on scholarships. I got exactly what I wanted, suppressants or none.”

“But you could have done it better, done it so much more easily…”

“Done what? A state facility? A forced bonding? I don’t owe you any explanations, Mr. Specter, but there’s a reason you’ve never interviewed an unbonded omega. They said the only way I could go to college was to bond. I could have allowed the first alpha who walked in my life to have their way with me, let them hold the bond over my head for the rest of my life in order to have a life. Or I could do this. It’s not a crime to want this on my own terms.”

Mr. Specter was leaning back now, as if forced away by the weight of Mike’s invective. It was only catching up to Mike now that he wasn’t going to come out of this room unscathed. If he hadn’t been screwed the moment the briefcase opened, he would be now that he had shown himself to be completely radical omegaist. Nothing pissed off an alpha like Harvey Specter more than being told that his authority was not a given, that his dominion over all and sundry ought to be challenged.

“But those drugs. Those are a crime, Mr. Ross.”

Mike hung his head. Yeah – screwed. He heard Specter move and he looked up again. Mr. Specter was sitting down behind the desk and opening his laptop.

“I’ll make you a deal, Michael. I’ll hire you – ” Mike scoffed at that, “No, I’m serious, I’ll hire you, if you go off the suppressants.”

Mike felt his face heat up as Specter held eye contact with him. He couldn’t tell if the flush was from humiliation or anger. He knew this was coming. There was only so long an alpha could be in a room with an unbonded omega without at least trying. Mike took a deep breath. “Look, I know this is playing out like some kind of fantasy to you, but this is my life, not whatever porn you’ve been watching. And this is your _law firm_ , Mr. Specter. It would be disastrous for everyone to have me there without the suppressants.”

“I could tell the other firms you’re interviewing with,” Specter said suddenly, “They’d never hire you if they knew.”

There was a bluff if Mike had ever heard one. “You won’t do that.”

“Oh?” Mr. Specter said, pretending to look through something on his screen, “Won’t I?”

“Because that’s a lose-lose situation. I know you don’t do those.”

“How would you know that?”

“I didn’t get two Ivy League degrees without learning to do my research.” Specter’s eyes flashed, as if he wanted to smile. It was true, too. Mike had read everything he could about Harvey Specter online before he came today. He couldn’t think on his feet like he used to, but he could compensate well. He never went into any situation like this without hours of prepwork and nothing in Specter’s record in the DA’s office indicated that he was that vindictive or that he would give up on something he wanted so easily. Mike’s heart rate began to slow a little. He could still get out of this.

“Well,” Mike said, getting up from his chair, “If that’s all, I’m going to have to decline your…offer. Thank you, Mr. Specter.”

“Well, Mike, that’s the thing,” Specter said, predatory and smug, “That’s not all. It’s not just that you’re an omega. It’s not just that you’re obviously acquiring suppressants illegally, because no one would prescribe them for nine years. You’re in even bigger trouble than that. Those are too many pills for just you. You’re dealing. And if I reported that?”

Mike almost startled. The safe shelter. He couldn’t let them be implicated in this. They needed him to make his deliveries. He had literally laid the evidence at Mr. Specter’s feet. So he couldn’t afford to call his bluff after all.

“Oh, are you nervous now, Mr. Ross?”

Mike’s head was spinning. Nerves didn’t cover the visceral fear he was feeling. “You’re sick,” he said

Mr. Specter shook his head. “I can see why you might think that, but I’m not interested in your sob story and I’m certainly not interested in your ass. I’m interested in someone who can lose a quarter of their IQ and still get through Harvard Law and pass the bar. I’m very interested in having an associate who will work that hard. But you’d only be useful to me if we had that Boy Scout work ethic with the more…exceptional intelligence.”

“You expect me to believe that? What’s going to happen when I walk into Pearson fucking Hardman, smelling for all the world like some piece of meat? How’s that going to go for me? For you?”

Specter gave him a blithe smile. “According to ERA, just fine. No one could fire you once you’re hired. If you do the work flawlessly and never make a mistake for your entire tenure at the firm, you’ll be golden.”

“Easier said than done,” Mike scoffed, but the possibility of getting back his mind, of being himself again, was tantalizing on the edge of his thoughts. He settled back in his seat. Specter’s plan was dangerous – insane, really, but to be able to have the career he’d been slaving for and to not have to constantly navigate the fog of the medications… 

“I’ve managed to do it,” Mr. Specter said, smirking.

“I’m sure you have," Mike agreed. He realized how little Specter understood what he wanted to put Mike through. “But you’ve never had to do flawless work while half your efforts are going to avoiding one forced bond or another. The top floors of law firms are full of alphas measuring their cocks anyway, without – without someone like me in the mix.”

And then Mike had to jump out of his seat as Specter _vaulted_ over the desk, papers flying, to crowd Mike as much as possible. His nostrils were flared and his dark eyes wide. His voice came out as a guttural snarl. “Are you saying I couldn’t keep some half-assed excuses for pencil pushers off of _my_ associate?”

Mike suppressed a shudder. He spent so much time keeping his head down that he forgot, sometimes, how easy it was to trigger an alpha. “Mr. Specter,” Mike said, straightening his spine in an attempt to get some height on the raging alpha, “I hope you realize that I’m not yours. Regardless of my orientation, I have no interest in being yours. I want to work for you. I want to become the best lawyer you’ve ever seen. If this is what it takes, I’m in, but if this turns out to be a high-handed plan to force me somewhere I don’t want to be, you will regret this.”

Specter was still panting heavily but he rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest. Mike had never been more thankful for the suppressants. If Specter could properly sense that Mike was an omega at that moment, he would not be backing down from the challenge so quickly. “That’s big talk,” he finally said,” coming from someone in your position.”

“As far as I can tell,” Mike countered, “Yours is the worse position. If you try to force a bond on me, I have access to suppressants and there are a dozen firms who would take a harassment case against Harvey Specter pro bono.”

Specter’s brow furrowed, but he was smirking as he considered Mike’s words. “Has anyone ever told you you’d make a good lawyer?”

“Well, we’ll find out Monday, won’t we?” Mike said, getting up and checking his watch and double-checking the clasps on his briefcase. He could still make it to the shelter in Queens, but he’d miss Grammy today.

Mr. Specter held out his hand and, this time, when Mike shook it, there was a look of approval in the other man’s face. “I look forward to it. And call me Harvey.”


End file.
